Forget the office debates. At a deeply polarized time and in a conservative-leaning era, the editors of People magazine were never going to go for a sex-in-the-hot-tub candidate in selecting the latest “Sexiest Man Alive.” And so it was hardly a surprise when, on Tuesday night, during an episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” the host revealed that this year’s crown had gone to the actor and filmmaker John Krasinski.
An amiable hunk and devoted family man with the requisite multiplatform audience appeal (“The Office,” “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” and “The Quiet Place,” among other star vehicles), a cozy throwback celebrity marriage (his wife is the actor Emily Blunt), two young daughters and solid East Coast roots (a Boston boy, he lives in a multimillion dollar apartment in Brooklyn) — Mr. Krasinski exudes an erotic energy suggestive less of the bedroom athlete than of the proverbial stable provider. His vibe, riffed the social media gadfly Blakely Thornton, is “giving country home, Volvo hybrid and a 401(k).”
Naturally, fans of the actor Glen Powell were distressed about the decision. Why Mr. Krasinski and not Mr. Powell, the “Twisters” actor, with his V-shaped physique and a smile that seems to encourage moral delinquency? But what were they expecting? In a nation battered and exhausted by a grueling political season, Mr. Krasinski was the ideal middle-of-the-road ticket, visually coded as preppy adjacent, in affect both familiar and humorous, evidently secure in his heterosexual identity and so generally inoffensive as to be the Switzerland of onscreen virility.
And what he is clearly not is one of the scandal-plagued hunks (Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck), serial Lotharios (Richard Gere, George Clooney, again Johnny Depp) or obvious thirst traps (Michael B. Jordan) who have been anointed the world’s sexiest by People in the decades since the publication inaugurated its popular “Sexiest Man Alive” franchise with Mel Gibson back in 1985.
At 45, Mr. Krasinski also lands in the franchise’s demographic sweet spot. If he was the obvious choice in that sense, his low-key sexiness also developed out of fashion choices that evolved through a collaboration with the stylist Ilaria Urbinati over the past decade and produced their own form of curb appeal.
Whether on the red carpet or on talk shows, Ms. Urbinati has tended to guide Mr. Krasinski toward Goldilocks choices — middle-path wardrobe options that are hip though almost never as fashion-forward as designs favored by risk takers like Donald Glover. The labels Mr. Krasinski likes and is most often seen wearing — Todd Snyder, Reiss, Brunello Cucinelli and the more aspirational Eleventy — can be counted on to produce the sort of image enhancement many men fantasize about achieving on their first Hinge date. “It’s not like John was ever dressing badly,” Ms. Urbinati said by phone from California after the announcement. “He was a jeans-and-sneakers guy, and we’ve just elevated that.”
Probably best known for outfitting some of Hollywood’s most adventurous leading men — think Bradley Cooper and Rami Malek — Ms. Urbinati found in Mr. Krasinski, as People also has, a “funny Everyman” quality that helps account for his versatility as a performer and as a newly certified erotic ideal.
“It’s like taking the average guy off the street and making some tweaks,” she added, referring to things like a pink sweater that Mr. Krasinski wore for one talk-show appearance, which was monogrammed with the initials of one of his daughters and paired with unexpected maroon trousers.
“I’m extremely into color theory” in dress, Ms. Urbinati said. Mr. Krasinski is an autumn, according to a popular form of color analysis that correlates skin tones to clothing by assigning wearers a season. He is fireside-cozy, in other words, at his most visually seductive in burgundy and brown and hunter green rather than in the monochrome red carpet looks demanded of most male celebrities.
“You put him in black and white, and it looks like he’s trying to be young though not in a good way,” she said, although for the People cover Mr. Krasinski is dressed in a bird’s eye tweed jacket with broad lapels over a basic white T-shirt, looking like the embodiment of the superlative he was being awarded.
“He basically looks great in everything,” Ted Stafford, the director of men’s fashion at Men’s Health, said. “I do find him sexy but also relatable,” he added. “And he’s actually getting better with age.”
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